002 · 13 August 2026
On numbering things
Why every piece gets a number instead of a name, and what happens to the number when the piece is gone.
Names drift. A piece called “the little gold hoop” stops being useful the second there are three of them. So everything here takes the next number in the sequence when it is photographed, and keeps it.
The number is not a position in a list. It is an identifier. Number 004 is number 004 whether it is at the top of the page, buried in a section, or sold out and struck through. Sorting the index differently does not renumber anything, and it never will — a number that moves is not an identifier, it is a row index pretending to be one.
When something sells out we do not remove it. The row stays, the number stays, the name gets a line through it and the status column reads Gone. Three reasons:
- It is honest about what this shop is. Small lots, no restock schedule.
- It tells you something real — which things move, and how quickly.
- It stops us quietly rewriting history to look better stocked.
A list you can only read forwards is a catalogue. A list you can read backwards is a record.